Yeah it's fine to make some changes or try new things, but to remove tried an true features and replaced them with some committee's idea of a better way is ridiculous, its like buying a car and finding out that the steering wheel has been replaced with 3 rubber knobs and one combined Gas/Break pedal.

I think they needed an answer in the tablet space, and this is an attempt to provide a common interface across their OS stack. I can now buy a Windows Phone, Tablet and PC have all my "apps" and the same interface on all devices. There is something to be said about a common paradigm that works on all devices. However, for us power users it doesn't make sense.